Chapter X: Desert Borax Mines

In the most desolate, dangerous, and terrifying locality in the United States, if not in the whole world, lie the largest known deposits of borax in the universe. Death Valley is the repository of more mineral wealth than has ever been brought out of the Klondike, but Death stands guard over the hoards of gold, silver, copper, salt, niter, borax, and precious stones known to abound there.

Every year prospectors brave the terrors of the desert and enter the dread portals of the gateway to the valley. This gateway is through a range of mountains to which have been given the most appropriate name of Funeral Mountains. Every year new tragedies are enacted in the valley and new graves are made under the shadow of these mountains, or else the victims, finding no grave, lie upon the burning sands and stare with sightless eyes at the mountains which bound the valley.

Where fortunes are to be made lives are held cheap, and natures great deposits of wealth in the valley have tempted man to pit his ingenuity, strength, and endurance against the powers of the great destroyer.

In the United States the supply of borax is limited to the States of California, Oregon, and Nevada. Until within the last ten or twelve years the supply of borax in this country was derived from evaporating the water of Clear Lake and several alkaline marshes in California and Nevada. In 1890, it was discovered that the crust of borax which formed in such places was but a secondary deposit from the main body of the mineral drug stored below. Then began the real history of the borax industry in this country.

It is said that borax is never found in nature except in craters of extinct volcanoes. Be that as it may, certain it is that in California all the deposits yet discovered lie at the bottom of those bowl-shaped valleys which are known to have been once the outlet for the vomitings of prehistoric Pélées.

The presence of borax is indicated by the snowy appearance of the valley bottoms, and to the uninitiated these white stretches, when seen from a little distance, might well be mistaken for snow-fields. Many a life has been lost in attempting to cross these snowy plains, for beneath the thin shell of salts lie fathomless depths of poisonous waters, for the funnels of those extinct volcanoes are filled with solutions of a multitude of mineral drugs such as were never brewed in chemist's laboratory.

In Death Valley thirty thousand acres of borax, niter, soda, and salt deposits have been located. The valley is literally a vast chemical laboratory where Nature has compounded and stored drugs by the millions of tons. It is the drug store of the universe.

There are several different forms in which borax occurs in nature. It is found in solution in some of the lakes and pools, from which it is obtained by evaporation; in salts or crystals known as boreat, which require no other treatment than to be dissolved in vats of boiling water and then allowed to crystallize again, and it is found in the form of "cotton balls," as the round masses of ulexite are called, masses varying in size from a rifle-ball to a bushel basket. The finest borax on the market is made from the "cotton balls." These balls, when broken, are fibrous and woolly in appearance, hence the name.

When it was discovered that the real deposits of borax lie beneath the surface deposits, a genuine borax mine was located and developed at what is now known as Boreat, twelve miles north of Daggett, on the line of the Santa Fé railroad, where the reduction works are situated. The wonderful richness of this deposit has led to further explorations, and the remarkable finds in Death Valley have resulted.

When brought to the works at Daggett, the lumps of borax are fed into the mammoth iron jaws of a crusher which breaks them into lumps of an uniform size about the bigness of the average chestnut. These lumps are fed to the grinder, which reduces them to powder, and the powder, in turn, is passed through rollers like those used in the manufacture of the finest grades of wheat flour. From these rollers it comes forth as fine as the product of the wheat from which our most choice bread is made. Then it is mixed with carbonate of soda, which is mined in Death Valley, and the mixture is thrown into vats of boiling water and agitated by means of revolving wheels till the mass is dissolved and thoroughly mixed. From this compound are precipitated two powders, one the borax of commerce, the other the well-known product styled sal soda.

Borax from Death Valley first entered the markets about twenty years ago. It was mined from deposits found in the Calico Mountains and from one or two sinks in the valley, and it was hauled out of the valley and one hundred miles across the desert in wagons drawn by mule teams of from eighteen to thirty-two mules each.

During the five or six years following the opening of the mines, large quantities of borax were taken out and placed upon the market. Then, in the spring of 1888, the mines were closed because it was impossible to find men to work the mines or drive the mules. It became known that few men who went into the mines came out alive. At the end of six or seven months the miner succumbed to the terrific heat and the poisonous atmosphere, or else he was a broken-down invalid incapable of doing further work. It came to be considered simply a form of suicide to engage in the work, consequently the mine-owners were unable to continue operations.

The desert borax wagons are a marvel of themselves. The wagon proper is made to hold ten tons of borax. It has a bed sixteen feet long by four feet wide and sides six feet high. The hind wheels are seven feet, and the front wheels five feet, in diameter. They are fitted with tires eight inches wide and an inch thick, and an empty wagon weighs seventy-eight hundred pounds. In addition to this combined weight of wagon and load, amounting to about fourteen tons, is the trailer, as is called the water wagon, which it is necessary to attach to the train in order that man and beast may not perish of thirst on the journey. Altogether, the plucky teams have to haul through the yielding sands about twenty tons--nearly or quite one ton to the beast.

A traction engine is also employed in hauling the product of the mines. This is a huge concern weighing hundreds of tons and doing the work of several mule teams. This machine has not been found adapted to all features of the work, however, and is not destined to supersede the mule wagons.

A little more than twenty years ago borax was worth, in this country, in the neighborhood of one dollar per pound. It is now being mined,--even under the present disadvantages,--prepared, and marketed at a profit at about ten cents a pound, with a prospect of still lower figures in the near future.